Mao Zedong

(Mao Tse-Tung)

(1893-1976)

   Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong was born into a peasant background and trained as a teacher. He helped establish the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 and led an uprising against the national government led by Chiang Kai-shek in 1927 and established the Soviet Republic of China. When his forces were surrounded in 1934, he led them on the “Long March” more than 6,000 miles from southeast China to the north, where they were able to regroup. When war began with Japan in 1937, the communists united with the national government against their common enemy in an uneasy alliance. After the Japanese were defeated, fighting with the nationalists resumed, and Mao was victorious in 1949, establishing the People’s Republic of China. Mao, known as Chairman Mao, was ruler of China until his death, taking the country through both the “Great Leap Forward” from 1958 to 1962 and the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Although a long-term opponent of the United States, in 1971 Mao invited President Richard M. Nixon to visit the following year and paved the way toward opening relations between the two nations.